Official Truth, 101 Proof: The Inside Story of Pantera (31 page)

They must have given me some kind of sedative that night so that I didn’t have a seizure. When I woke up the next morning, I had to fall in line with all these fruitcakes. I looked around trying to get my bearings, and this girl came up to me who looked like she’d fallen face-first into a fishing tackle box.

“Hi, I’m a cutter,” she said, pulling up her sleeve to show me the cuts, and she had twenty-one fucking earrings all over her face.

“Where the fuck
am
I?” I asked somebody.

“Oh, you’re at Millwood Mental Institute,” they told me. Well, this place was fucking wild. I thought, “This is not rehab, this is a mental institute and I’m not mental.”

“I’m discharging myself right this fucking minute. I’m in the wrong fucking spot right now.” I went home and did more research, and found out that there were a couple of real facilities around, one of them close to home, so I checked myself into that place the very next day.

I wanted to see what this concept of addiction is all about. I was genuinely interested in the process. I’m curious like that—it dates back to my childhood days of reading endless books—so I wanted the whys, the hows, and the whole fucking bit. Or at least I thought I did. The problem is, once you learn about the ways of addiction and the
waves
of addiction, well, then the party in your fucking head really starts rolling.

All of a sudden you’re armed with
too much
knowledge and you use that information you have to try and outwit the problem. Of course the irony is that by doing so you are merely confirming your addictive issues. You can drive yourself fucking crazy thinking about being sober. For example, if I saw someone leave a half-finished beer on the table and walk away, that would really piss me off, probably because they could do it and I knew I never could.

You also lie to yourself. Of course you do. That’s part of the process. You convince yourself that you can stop at any time, you think, “I’m in control of this and that” type of shit, but you can’t stop anything and, deep down, you know it. It’s called denial. Looking back now, I wish I had never gone looking for the information because it completely fucked with my head.

But my first rehab got me healthy on a superficial level at least. I went in for around thirty days, they gave you the right foods to eat. You go to these classes all fucking day long and put up with a bunch of other idiots, fucking people who—while you’re there really trying to help yourself—they’re on their sixteenth fucking rehab. The way all that works is just retarded, but your head gradually turns and when the thirty days are up, you do feel better. Was it the end of my problems? No, but it was a start and also
the
start of a long process.

JEFF JUDD

He found a place up in Grapevine that was a pretty well-thought of facility, so he went up there, checked himself in for a thirty-day program, and when he came out he functioned amazingly and didn’t touch a drink for six months. He was physically healthy and mentally healthy. Everything in his life was kicking ass and all he drank was coffee, coke, and water. I thought he had it licked.

The whole point of rehab is that when you come out, you don’t drink. Not an occasional beer or a glass of wine with dinner. Nothing. So what triggers the process of starting to drink again, having gone through thirty days of trying not to? Well, with me, it was something like if my shoes were fucking untied, I’d have a drink. I’m serious. Any fucking thing would give me a reason to jump on the sauce and for the next couple of years I would go back and forth with the business of drinking and trying to quit, simply because I hadn’t made the decision to quit—for
me.
I’d made it for every other reason
but
me. The guilt alone will kill you.

My wife and I had discussed the idea of moving out of Texas in 2003, but nothing had happened to make us act on that impulse. Maybe we both needed a change of scenery, who knows, but it was more complicated than you think, because I actually had four properties that I needed to dispose of before we moved anywhere.

2003 WAS ALSO THE YEAR
where communication within Pantera was at its most strained. Phil basically dropped off the map completely and wouldn’t answer anyone’s fucking calls, ours, management’s, or anyone else’s. I never talked to him but I was caught in the middle of
trying
to talk to him. Instead he went off and did the whole Superjoint Ritual thing and hardly told us he was doing it, and the rift between us got deeper and deeper to the point where I walked past him at a show somewhere and he didn’t even recognize me.

WALTER O’BRIEN

After the second Down record, it seemed like Pantera was no longer Phil’s priority, and it didn’t help that for the three years after
Reinventing the Steel
, Phil wouldn’t call anyone back. Not us, not the band, not
anyone,
and it got so bad that the only way to get any answers to anything band related was to pass a message on to one of his friends in New Orleans and they would then have to drive out to his house in the woods to give him it. He couldn’t give his attention because he was going to be in the studio with Superjoint or on tour with Superjoint, or he was going to be wherever with whoever.

“Phil and I are just tired of you guys being such fucking assholes. You think you’re being cool to people but you’re not.”

That’s just an example of what I said. Yes, the phone call I made to Darrell sometime in 2003 is something I wish I’d handled differently. It was one of those late-night-and-loaded type of deals for sure, but I meant everything that I said in its lengthy duration: how I couldn’t stand all Vinnie’s bullshit, and how I needed a break from all things Pantera for a while. I was tired of strip clubs and all the associated crap that I was dealing with, so when you’re caught in the middle for as long as I was, sooner or later the levee’s gonna break, and it finally did, so I had to say what I fucking said.

In the back of my mind there was more to it than that, though. I’d just had kids and wanted to see them grow, so the time off that I needed was going to fulfill that purpose also. But in retrospect I think I confided in the wrong person. I probably should have just told my wife or someone and vented it that way.

I actually thought at the time that Darrell had taken what I said all right, but the next time I spoke to him it was obvious that he hadn’t. He called the next day and said, “That was pretty fucking harsh, man.” And I apologized—reminded him I was loaded—and that again, I just needed a break. But now there was a distance between us that I hadn’t felt before.

RITA HANEY

Phil had stopped answering the phone, and Darrell felt like he’d been stabbed in the back because Phil wasn’t doing what he said he’d do. They arranged a meeting in New York, but Phil didn’t show up and Rex was caught in the middle of it all. Rex called one night, really intoxicated and it lasted a good three hours. He said some pretty harsh things to Darrell, who was completely sober at the time, and I know they were drunk words but it did seem like there had been some animosity building up and it sounded like he had Philip in his ear, too. I’m sure he regrets a lot of what he said. Darrell was trying to pump Rex for information about what was going on because he couldn’t find out anything from anybody else. Phil would not answer the phone and wouldn’t say what he was really trying to do and this was when Darrell realized that they were in trouble. Maybe there was no more Pantera. Philip totally has barriers. You can’t just pick up the phone and call the dude; you usually have to go through a couple of people so that made it easy for him to shut himself away, especially in his compound, which at that time was still a heroin den.

2003 continued with very little direct band communication at all. I ran into Darrell at a Motörhead show in Dallas a few weeks after that phone call, and he wouldn’t even talk to me. I’ll never forget the look on his face. I still have it in my mind. It was a
horrible, terrible
look but what could I do? I said what I said and couldn’t take it back.

Vinnie and Dime were really hurt by what was happening and at a certain point they just said, “Fuck it, we’re going to start another band,” as if to say, “Fuck y’all.” I didn’t understand why that sentiment was directed at me, but when it was, that line was drawn in the sand. I was all for them doing their Damageplan thing, so I just said to Dime, “Do what you’ve got to do, man.” As I’ve said a million times: I wanted time away from all things Pantera.

I SPENT THE REST
of 2003 and early 2004 doing things that had absolutely nothing to do with Pantera.

I was enjoying watching my kids grow and hanging out partying on my thirty-foot powerboat. I bought it back in ’98; it had a full kitchen, could sleep six, and was docked up at Grapevine Lake, also known as “Party Lake.” We’d go out there—take the kids, too—and one of my best friends was a dock mate, so we’d just say, “Okay, let’s go to the lake” and we’d head out there on a Thursday night and party until Sunday. The boat had flames painted on the back. I named it “The Hell Yeah.” Vinnie later stole that name for his band.

PERIODICALLY I’D HAVE TO
deal with communication from the Abbotts, Vinnie mainly, but all he would ever do was bitch about what Phil was or was not doing, so there was nothing really for me to do or say. Phil still wasn’t talking to us, but he was more than happy to discuss his plans with the press. It became obvious as 2003 dragged on that his intentions were different than what he’d initially said.

We were in limbo.

And while I was happy to finally have time to relax and spend time with the family, I had no way of predicting exactly what Phil’s longer-term plans were, particularly when he recorded a
second
Superjoint record and started intimating in the press that they were his main focus. I would rather he had talked to us about it.

Phil had a different manager by then, and at one stage of this whole communication vacuum, his manager was calling
me
to get answers about Phil and his new band. I’d just say, “Fuck you, dude.”

“Hey man, I’ll manage you, too,” he’d say.

“What are you going to manage? There’s nothing
to
manage,” I explained.

“Maybe I could get Pantera back together?”

“Who the fuck do you think you are? You’re a fucking douchebag.” His name was Dennis Rider.

What does it say about the state Phil was in when his own manager was coming to me for information?

KATE RICHARDSON

Superjoint Ritual were out on the Ozzfest tour in 2004 and we had a date in Dallas. Everybody else was being all dramatic saying, “Oh my God, Oh my God, what happens if they meet the brothers?” But Philip and I between us both thought, “Man, I really hope they [the Abbots] do show up.” Philip said to me, “I’d want to pull them into a room, give them a hug and say, ‘This is all bullshit, I love you guys. No matter what projects we’re working on, I love you.’” We were at first told that they never showed up at the show, but we later found that they did show up but people steered us all apart and, between security coordination or whatever, made it impossible for Philip and the Abbott brothers to see each other.